This is a park I pass all the time. It looks like a lake. There’s also a section that’s for pets and the water was so high it washed all the chairs and toys up against a fence.
Good thoughts for everybody suffering from all the floods in the area.
Since we last met…
Well first…
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Ok now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…
Do y’all remember how much I’ve raved about the InstaPot?
I used the InstaPot to make a batch of pintos. This was another pressure cooker hit. Perfect soft creamy beans in about and hour (and a half if you add in the prep time and the time it takes for the pot to pressure up and then down at that end.)
Memorial Day eats.
Celiac smores. 🙂 I mean really? What’s the point of the graham cracker anyway? 😉
Albuquerque’s pot fell off and broke. Pioneer Woman coffee mug to the rescue. This particular mug couldn’t match my kitchen more if it tried.
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Now about that blueberry treat. 🙂
Do y’all have some summer fruit you’ve been trying to figure out how to use up?
Meet your solution. 🙂
1 cup softened butter. 1 1/4 cup sugar. Beaten for about 4 minutes.
Add vanilla. 2 eggs. 8oz soft cream cheese.
Beat til smooth.
Add 3 cups flour. I used gfjules of course but this is just a regular recipe and I didn’t adjust anything at all. Just swapped out the flour. 1 heaping tsp baking powder. 1 heaping tsp baking soda. 1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp milk. Beat til combined.
Spread half of mixture into a 9 X 13 pan.
Cover with 1 – 2 cups blueberries.
Top with rest of batter. It’s kind of thick. Spray your spatula with some Pam to help it spread more easily.
Pour 6 tbsp melted butter over batter. THEN (I didn’t get a pic of this but) mix together 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour and cinnamon to taste. Then sprinkle it over the butter. Spread it around so the sugar / flour mixture soaks up the butter but do it gently so it doesn’t start mixing into the batter. You want it to remain it’s own layer so it bakes up kind crispy on top.
Bake at 350* for 35 – 45 minutes. It took 35 minutes in my convection oven.
This is a kinda step-y recipe but trust me it’s worth the work. 🙂
The whole thing was good but the cake part? I already have plans to try it as something completely different. I’ll share if it turns out. 🙂
I haven’t forgotten about this space. I just figure nobody wants to hear about pain after pain and health issue after issue all the time.
Plus I told y’all a while back I’m working on a project right now and it’s taking up so much of my focus. I’m actually having a lot of fun with it and will probably share here at some point but it’s too early right now.
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So…I’ve cooked a few thing since the last time we met.
Now this first thing will probably freak some of y’all out so just move on to the next one. 😉
So a few years ago I was watching Chopped on the Food network and if you’re not familiar with that show they give the contestants all kinds of weird ingredients and they have to turn it into something good. On this one episode they gave them puffy Cheetos and one of the contestants used them as ‘fish stick’ breading. I’d always wanted to try that.
A couple weeks ago I had 2 mahi fillets left over and a couple handfuls of Cheetos left in a bag and decided it was sign and to give it a try.
Again I know this freaking some of y’all out but I have to say…I’m gonna do this again. It was pretty good. 🙂
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Next up…
Posting this one just to say Barilla is without question the best gluten – free pasta I’ve had. Even the non-celiacs in the house are eating this with zero complaints. What I love the most about this brand is that it doesn’t break down in the boiling water or become one big sticky clumpy mess. I’ve tried spaghetti, elbow and penne. They all held up perfectly.
We wouldn’t need bathroom laws if all these intollerant, hateful, @ssholes would stop raising equally intollerant, hateful @sshole kids.
On the same topic…human garbage for this week’s post = did y’all read this story about the human garbage in Dallas who followed the born and living life as her FEMALE birth gender lesbian into the women’s restroom just because she didn’t look / wasn’t dressed like a girl?
I truly hope there’s a special place in hell for all y’all coming out of the woodwork in support of these hate fueled bills.
On a side note…I pixied my hair the other day. I hope none of these @ssholes mistake me for a non-female.
On second thought…bring it on. I’ve been needing some Gucci retail therapy and trust me…you’ll be buying when I get done with you. 😉
More cooking…
Y’all remember how I ordered a bunch of gfJules mixes a while back? Well Papa B loves the muffins. He asked me if I’d make him a batch and I didn’t have any bananas or blueberries or apple sauce (all options for the recipe she includes with the mix) so I pureed up this can of Caramel Apple pie filling and used the required amount it in place of apple sauce. It worked perfectly.
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Ok this is the main baking I want to share today…
Dry ingredients.
Liquid ingredients.
Mix dry and wet til combined. Then throw in butter and ‘knead’ for 5 minutes.
It’ll look like this.
Divide. Cover and rise til doubled.
Bake and eat. 🙂
If you followed the old blog or know me in real life you know one of my favorite homemade breads ever is Water Roux bread. I’d made it so many times pre-celiac and then made it several times gluten – free with Cup4Cup. It was one of the few things I hadn’t tried yet with gfJules. Well that changed last week. I used my regular recipe just using gfJules in place of flour and I also added some of that gluten – free dough enhancer I wrote about last time.
The verdict?
This is the best gluten – free bread ever. Period. Period. 😉
If you have gfJules flour try this. You won’t be sorry. 🙂 Even though I don’t normally put full recipes on here I’m actually going to stick the recipe at the end of this post…after the music. Seriously. Try it. 🙂
Ok that’s all for today. Hope y’all are doing well / have a great week and I’ll see you soon. 🙂
Water Roux Bread
for the roux:
6 oz Milk
1 1/2 oz Flour
Combine the milk and flour and cook over low to medium heat til it’s pudding consistency. Let it cool to about 100*.
While it’s cooling measure the rest of the dry ingredients into mixing bowl.
6 oz Milk
16 oz Flour
2 tbsp Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Yeast
1 1/2 tsp Salt
4 tbsp Soft Butter
Heat up the remaining milk.
Then add it plus roux to dry ingredients.
Mix to combine. It’ll look messy and way too thick. DON’T try to ‘fix’ it by adding liquid.
Trust me. Trust the process. 🙂
Now throw your softened butter into the bowl and start ‘kneading’ til smooth. 5 minutes.
Portion dough into pans and let rise til doubled.
When they’re ready to bake place them in a COLD oven.
Close the door and turn the oven to 350* and bake til brown and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom.
It took these small loaves about 30 minutes in my convection oven.
Full loaves take a good hour. I don’t have great luck with full loaves of gluten – free bread so I usually do smaller loaves.
It’s been a little while 🙁 so I’m just gonna jump in here.
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So I did a little cooking this week.
Up first was some gluten – free dough / bread I needed for garlic toast. Of course I used gfjules flour and I tried out this Authentic Foods gluten – free dough enhancer. I’ve only used it once but based on these results I’m a big fan. Normally for my kitchen conditions I need to bake gluten – free bread in a pan for the support. I did this loaf free form and it held up better than ever. It has ginger as an ingredient and I was a little worried you’d be able to taste it but this had no added taste at all.
Next up…
Individual shrimp lasagna. I used Heartland gluten – free lasagna noodles.
And this was the best thing I’ve made in ages. I did most of it with an alfredo based sauce but I also did some with a rosa style sauce…alfredo sauce with a tiny bit of tomato sauce mixed in. I used the bread to make garlic toast to go along with this meal.
While I was making the lasagna I decided to make a small pan of something I’d seen floating around for a while and always wanted to try but didn’t want to waste the ingredients on a full pan incase it was gross…bubble up.
I held back enough dough to make 7 little balls. Put a small layer of rosa sauce in the bottom of the pan. Scattered the dough balls.
Topped with shrimp.
Then more rosa sauce.
Then baked at 350* for about 30 minutes then topped with mozz and baked til bubble-y. We all agreed this is a keeper and well worth the ingredients for a full pan. I was worried about the dough being weird when baked this way but it was perfect. The bottoms were kinda crispy while the tops absorbed the sauce and were really soft and delish. The original recipe calls for spaghetti sauce and that’s how I’ll make the next pan.
Way to go, y’all.
This made me smile. The couple got married and their wedding party dressed in rainbow suits. 🙂
I don’t have much else to share this week so I’ll close with this…
Happy Mother’s Day to the best Mom a girl and her sister could have. 🙂 You’re the very best of the best and I love you. 🙂
We’re doing Mother’s day today and I made a treat I hope to share next week. Fingers crossed it turned out blog worthy. 🙂
We’re doing a really low-key Easter. I’m the cook / baker in the fam and I’m just not up for a lot of work. We were going to go out but then I got sick (possibly glutened) earlier in the week so now we’re doing a low-key meal at home. I am making a couple of things so hopefully they’ll be blog worthy and I’ll share next week.
Let’s see…what’s happened this week?
Bought a new hibiscus…one with the twisty stalk thing.
What? I think even I in my epic sewing failure could make this for the cost of a few sheets.
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We didn’t watch anything good or bad this week so I don’t have any docu thoughts.
Have y’all seen these Sweet Cream Soda at Sonic? I made the terrible mistake of ordering one and it was the grossest thing I’ve tasted in a good while. I’m not even sure what they’re supposed to taste like but this one is root beer and I mean look at that…it’s definitely not root beer color. It was like a tiny little bit of root beer plus some extra carbonated water plus a dash of cream. The overwhelming taste was carbonated water. Yuck.
These are from last week but I made some mini banana muffins using a bag of gfjules muffin mix. They look kind of lumpy. That’s because I left some of the banana chunky. I highly recommend doing that. 🙂 (not huge chunks…just not all mashed up and smooth)
Ok so remember last week when I made biscuits into bread crumbs? Well that was to make some crab cakes for Lent Friday.
Regular bread crumbs, chopped celery and butter. Softened celery in butter then added 1 cup bread crumbs and tossed them around to mix and coat.
1 lb Crab Meat
1 cup regular style gluten – free Bread Crumbs
Celery
2 tbsp Mayo
1 tbsp Dijon
1 Egg
Seasonings…I used regular salt / pepper / onion / garlic powder in some and then Cajun seasoning in the rest.
All mixed up by hand.
Portioned out. I used an ice cream scoop to keep them all pretty much the same size. I ended up with 16 total.
Breading station. I did flour, egg then the panko style biscuit crumbs.
Breaded and ready to fry.
Finished.
Served with salt crusted baked potatoes (and those who don’t have to drink their veg had some kind of broccoli mixed veg concoction). These were excellent. Even the crab hater in the group ate one. 🙂 As you can see the panko style crumbs crisped up perfectly. They were super crunchy on the outside and then soft and crab-y on the inside.
I made a dipping sauce of equal parts mayo and sour cream plus some crab boil (the kind in the little bag not the box). That Zatarain’s Crab Boil makes the best Cajun seasoning and a little goes a long way. This is how I tested it out to get my ratios…just a little bit on a plate at a time before mixing up a bigger batch.
That’s all for this week.
Happy Easter if you celebrate or happy weekend if you don’t. 🙂
Did some baking this week. It’s never a good sign when you get all your dry ingredients measured out and then something falls off a shelf and into said dry ingredients bowl sending flour all over the place. That recipe turned out awful.
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Got my new Hill merch. I feel the need to clarify that I’m not channeling Meme and planning to wear it with that stripedey skirt under it 😉 I just forgot to crop it out. Anyway the first time I washed it the color on that one spot of the logo washed completely off. I didn’t think they’d do anything since I’d already washed it but I sent them the pic and they’re sending me another one.
This week’s human garbage? Joe Osborn. Watched this docu about The Carpenters. I have some younger readers so The Carpenters were a big deal brother / sister duo in the 70’s and early 80’s…before the sister, Karen died of anorexia. This docu was filmed in 1997 and is horrible picture quality but is the story of their career. This Joe @ss__ was talking about the first time he heard Karen sing in the studio after she’d played the trumped and he said “forget the trumpet this chubby girl can sing”. OK so it’s the late 60’s and he’s an @ss__ that’s one thing but again this was filmed in the late 90’s and 14 years after the women he’s talking about STARVED herself to DEATH to look thin. Seriously you’re such garbage you can’t even fake acting like a decent human being for the docu?
Pressed together in Saran and into the icebox overnight.
Rolled and folded 4 times til the butter is all incorporated and the dough is silky smooth. No cool rest between rolls and folds. I only did the finger press thing to show how soft the dough is.
Back into the icebox for several hours.
Then I rolled it out and made the flakiest layered biscuits. It was a dream to work with. I used one for a little cheeseburger slider. Everyone else ate theirs breakfast style. Then…
I took the rest of them and made panko style bread crumbs…they’re in the bag on the left. The bag on the right is regular crumbs made from old bread.
I needed some bread crumbs for a recipe I’ll post next week and I had the idea of making layer style biscuits so I could separate the layers, dry them, then get a thicker crumb when pulsed. I remembered one of my Meme’s biscuit recipes and tried it out gluten – free. Loved it. I also made a batch for the freezer where I didn’t do all the rolling. I just grated the butter into the flour, mixed it all up then rolled out a little piece of dough for a tester to see how it would taste. It was delish too…but of course had no layers…and a lot less work. I’lltry to remember to post pics whenever I bake the freezer dough.
Ok that’s all for today. Y’all have a great weekend and I’ll see you soon. 🙂
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